Retailers can greatly benefit from learning about their peers’ success stores. In this section, Retail TouchPoints offers case study articles featuring exclusive interviews with retail executives and their solution provider partners. These in-depth looks into retailer implementations include statistics, metrics and ROI use cases, in addition to quotes from the executives leading the charge.

It’s always important for retailers to offer optimal web site performance, but it’s absolutely critical when the merchandise being offered is a limited release or a collector’s item. That’s when a site is likely to attract much higher traffic than usual, concentrated in a short period of time. The last thing any merchant wants is to experience the wrath of a frustrated customer during these high-profile events. Remember when Target’s web site crashed when the company launched its Lilly Pulitzer designer collaboration in 2015?

The nonprofit organization Habitat for Humanity ReStore serves as a donation center that takes in used furniture, appliances, home accessories and building materials and then sells them at a fraction of the retail price, donating all the proceeds to local Habitat for Humanity organizations. The retailer wanted to know exactly how effective its locations were in attracting customer traffic. In 2015, the company installed a beta version of the Dor traffic sensor and analytics platform in two stores before rolling the platform out to the rest of its 850 locations over the next year. The platform uses proprietary thermal sensing technology combined with machine learning algorithms to provide insights about customer foot traffic. The data gave the retailer insights into which stores needed to expand their hours and how to maximize the efficiency of volunteer staff.

Members-only e-Commerce fashion retailer Rue La La has expanded its partnership with e-Commerce media network and product sampling company BrandShare to deliver more free product samples to its shoppers. When the retailer ships purchased products to consumers, it regularly adds a package with a sample product from a fashion, beauty, or food and beverage brand. Each package is designed to surprise the shopper upon delivery, and includes a card explaining why Rue La La believes the product is a good fit for the consumer. Rue La La first partnered with BrandShare in 2014 in an effort to drive loyalty to its brands. By delivering samples and targeted advertising in-home, Rue La La can generate new product sales going forward while enabling CPG brands to directly engage with its customers. As many as 73% of consumers said a new product sample would persuade them to purchase the item, according to data from Sampling Effectiveness Advisors.

An e-Commerce retailer with a growing brick-and-mortar presence, natural cosmetics beauty brand 100% PURE sought to acquire more consumers, improve its in-store experiences and more accurately measure KPIs such as traffic and conversion rates. With the help of in-store analytics solution provider RetailNext, the cosmetics brand now can track shopper preferences, enabling it to add personalization to its customer experience. Personalization is the “low-hanging fruit” that 100% PURE is using to attract customers that may only visit one of its channels, according to Rick Kostick, CEO and Co-Founder of 100% PURE.

As an online destination for photography, imaging and consumer electronics, Adorama relies on customer reviews to provide product context for shoppers. To help drive more interest in some underperforming items, Adorama turned to review syndication. Beginning in February 2017, the retailer started syndicating reviews from brand manufacturer sites. Four months later, 15% of total product reviews were syndicated. The retailer expects to triple this percentage by the end of 2017. With the help of customer-generated content (CGC) platform provider TurnTo, the retailer opened up syndication to give visibility to more merchandise that hadn’t motivated many reviews previously. Product syndication is designed to prevent shoppers from leaving the site and searching for customer reviews on either the manufacturer’s site, or another online retailer.

In an effort to proactively engage in customer support, online nutrition brand Vega adopted a “surprise and delight” mentality designed to convert satisfied customers into brand advocates. The strategy has proven successful: Vega generated positive brand sentiment on Instagram at a rate of 98.5% by the end of 2016. Only five months into 2017, Vega’s “surprise and delight” campaigns are paying off. When leveraging Instagram as a customer service platform, Vega reported:

Retailers have debated back and forth about how they’re going to generate sales and traffic on Prime Day, but one online retailer is turning to both its own e-Commerce site and Amazon to attract shoppers. As part of its Prime Day strategy, eBags is offering twice as many ‘Extreme Deals’ as it did last year during the week of Prime Day, with markdowns on products such as backpacks, luggage and handbags. Discounted items are often best-sellers, with initially announced merchandise deals including a JanSport Superbreak Backpack, a Travelers Club Hardside Expandable Spinner Carry-On, or a Travelon Anti-Theft Exclusive Handbag.

In conjunction with IBM and Apple, City Furniture has developed new mobile apps to improve the customer experience within its showrooms. The move has significantly enhanced shopper-associate interaction, cutting in half the time required for a customer to select the product, choose services and delivery, then make a payment or apply for credit. To expedite this in-store shopper journey, City Furniture launched three MobileFirst for iOS apps for iPad Pro: ASAP (Accelerating Sale Associates’ Performance), Payment, and Finance. City Furniture is rolling out the apps to 400 store associates across 15 City Furniture showrooms and 12 Ashley Furniture HomeStore showrooms in South Florida.

An early adopter of B2B e-Commerce, online specialty light bulbs seller Atlanta Light Bulbs recently saw the need to differentiate itself from a market that was starting to overflow with newer competitors. Within a year of implementing the BigCommerce toolkit of apps, the B2B wholesaler: Increased orders 29.4%; Reduced abandoned revenue 96.85%; Expanded to 8,700 products; and Grew online revenue 70%, with 25% driven directly from BigCommerce apps.

Soccer Express and DIY Home Center are powering their e-Commerce capabilities with the implementation of the NetSuite Unified Cloud Commerce platform, resulting in an increase in revenue, average order value and conversion rates.

Many retailers talk a good game when it comes to personalizing interactions with each customer, but Fabletics really walks the walk. The brand is gathering extensive customer data from the 1.2 million members of its continuity-based subscription retailing program; Fabletics supplements this data collection with sophisticated in-store technologies that build comprehensive customer profiles in near real-time. But Fabletics also uses that data, in ways large and small. This continuous feedback loop gives the retailer a competitive edge in a number of key areas, including:

With more than 8,200 stores nationwide, Walgreens has the largest brick-and-mortar footprint of pharmacy-based retail in the U.S. But even in this comfortable position, the brand refuses to rest on its laurels, striving to redefine what convenience means to consumers. During a presentation at the 2017 Retail TouchPoints Retail Innovation Conference, Wayne Duan, Director of Digital Commerce at Walgreens, shared three tips for creating a more convenient retail experience: Embrace the “digital commerce iceberg”: Infuse digitally influenced sales into KPIs and measurement DNA; Collaborate with third-party partners: Provide a platform that allows partners to tap into their assets and assist in lead generation, conversion and analysis; and Remove friction at all touch points through better communication.

Enhancing the user experience (UX) is a common challenge for brands and retailers, especially as consumers continue to shift towards mobile and e-Commerce. To better understand how users engaged with its mobile e-Commerce and improve its UX, cosmetics brand L’Occitane en Provence partnered with analytics solution provider ContentSquare to gain deeper insights into what’s working and what isn’t. With an enhanced understanding of user behavior, the company achieved a 15% lift in sales on mobile devices.

Loyalty programs come in all shapes and sizes, and many retailers are finding that successful programs go beyond discounts. In fact, 63% of loyalty program members believe that having a wide range of rewards and offers is the most important aspect of a loyalty program, according to research from Collinson Latitude. That’s why every brand and retailer must tailor its rewards program in ways that benefit both the company and the customer. Family-owned convenience store retailer Spinx wanted to create a loyalty program that helped to better position its high-quality, premium products — such as fried chicken or health wraps — without diluting the value and equity of the brand with discounts. The company partnered with Excentus, a loyalty marketing and technology solutions provider with a Fuel Rewards offering, to create its first-ever loyalty program, Spinx Xtras.

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Instead of offering discounts on convenience store items, the Spinx Xtras program allows members to earn discounts on gas. “Through the Spinx Xtras program we are able to offer customers fuel discounts through in-store item purchases, a market basket discount and payment options by which customers link their loyalty card to their checking account,” said Sandy Turner, Director of Marketing and Advertising…